How To Start Garri Processing Business In Nigeria

Garri processing is so far one of the most lucrative businesses in west African today. it is often said that garri don’t have advertisement but it sell more than product with thousand of advertisement.

Garri which we often call as gari or garry and others call it tapioca, it’s a popular West African food made from cassava tubers.

Garry, Garri or tapioca is mainly called ‘garri‘ in Nigeria, Cameroon, Sierra Leone, Benin, Togo and in Ghana.

Actually, while in school, we are used to calling it G4. For a reason which is actually not worth a sec of you time researching.

It is an essential food widely consumed by most West African countries, and has recently stamped its name among the most exported African food products.

The end product is packed in 50kg bags or less, and exported to other countries.

To make garri, cassava tubers are skinned, washed and crushed to produce a mash.

The mash is retained in a porous bag and weights are placed on the bag for some time up to two days more to press excess water and starch out.

It is then sieved (or sifted) and fried in extra-large clay frying pot or a mechanized frying process you have with or without oil.

The resulting dry granular garri can be stored for long periods. It may be pounded or ground to make fine flour.

If you are attentive going into a well-planned and effective garri processing business, then there are some things you need to consider.

Land: land is one of the major requirements for any business. Getting the right scale of land.

Processing area: Another important requirement is the area of work.

This is the places where all the work activities are carried out. Starting from the skinning of the cassava to the packaging of the final product.

Every garri production processes cannot be carryout in one environment as some processes don’t need water while others do.

The dry area also allows the scale to found a sitting place. The scale’s use is well known to all in measuring into the required quantity.
Toilets, borehole or a clean well, and the truck for delivery will have to settle outside.

Some uses fence while some love the open space. Either way, there will be a shed where fresh cassava tuber are delivered and peeled hand or by a cassava peeling machine.

The disadvantages are always with them. While hand peeling wastes time and consumes both energy and money, the peeler has its own, mainly two:

1. When the body of the tuber is not regular, it doesn’t peel off every skin. You will still have to pay people to peel the remaining that were not properly peeled.

2. If you have to adjust the peeling machine to peel deeper, be ready to loose most of your tubers to waste, you will have to think it wisely.

PRODUTION PROCESSES: The processes for producing garri and the equipment use for all the processes are briefly explained below.

This will help give the guide on how to go about using the equipment and process involved in it.

Skinning or Peeler: this is the first process after the purchase of the cassava from the farm.

If you are producing a very small quantity you can use the manual process for this but in a case where you are producing large quantities then the peeler will come to play.

We earlier said that when the tubers are not regular in shape the peeler will not peel all the part of the cassava.

The blade of the peeler has settings, this setting can be adjusted to the way you will like it.

You can decide to adjust the peeler to a setting that it will peel all the skin but this will do damage to your cassava thereby causing waste of resources.

Meshing: this process is mainly done by the machine. The peeled cassava is broke in to smaller form almost smooth.

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Hydraulic presser: This is the main machine in the whole garri processing. The manual production process, do not need the rest machine to produce. Hydraulic presser is the machine that presses the bags of meshed cassava to removed excess water that might not let the garri dry when frying.

This is a very essential process in the garri processing. If the meshed not well pressed you will not get the required result and this might create room for lost or waste.

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Mechanical Sieve: the well pressed cassava is now sieved to remove the bigger particles from the meshed.

This machine can also remove unwanted thickness of some cassava stream. The sieving process is done two times and this is just one of it.

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Frying: frying is where all the effort of men from the beginning can be considered as half job well done. Here a little of the pressed mesh is put into the frying pan on top of the clay fire-stand.

As the clay pot receives heat a continuous steering process is been applied so that the garri will not thicken and form large lumps. This process will continue till the garri is well dried and free from moisture.

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This process is done manually or by an automated manual process which ever pleases you.

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final product packaged.

After frying, you sieve to separate the bigger particles from the fine produce. Some people likes them as larger finished products while some prefer it to be fine finished.

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Garri processing is very lucrative, and widely consumed.

* it is advisable to finish the floors of your small factory with ceramic or rubber tiles for easy cleaning.